


Bacon Saver

by tatersalad5001



Series: Miracle Synchro Fusion [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Background Relationships, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slice of Life, ai secretly mildly inconveniences jaden's life, chazz doesn't show up in person, kidmodo dragon makes a cameo, patch notes again: kusanagi apparently has a first name in the dub now, patch notes! now working based on the vrains dub rather than the vrains sub, so once again...the whole story has been updated to reflect this!, the previous two tags are more implied than anything but. shrugs my shoulders, the whole story has been updated to reflect this, this in turn mildly inconveniences yusaku's life, yusaku is himself and everyone else wants him to lighten up for once
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-06-05 22:16:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15180539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatersalad5001/pseuds/tatersalad5001
Summary: Yusaku glanced up at the front of the line. Right, he recognized that customer. Jaden Yuki, that guy who happened to come to the truck the one day he’d been on hot dog duty. The guy who insisted duels were fun. The guy who made the comment about dueling for his life. Had he been a victim of the incident? Or some other event that was equally as messed up? Either way, the type of dueling he’d eluded to was one Yusaku was all too familiar with. Anyone else who knew dueling like that was rare, so at least on that day, Jaden Yuki had certainly piqued Yusaku’s interest.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so uh, I've messed with the name of the series a bit, so if you've read anything that's part of Super Polymerization, the series name has now been changed to Miracle Synchro Fusion! The previous name wasn't really doing it for me, and I tried another name briefly that you might have also noticed, but that one didn't, either. Considering the main part of this AU centers around GX and 5DS, this feels better to me. Hopefully that clears up any mild confusion but, that's enough about that.
> 
> As far as Miracle Synchro Fusion goes, the entire series takes place post-GX, and this part is no different. As far as Vrains goes, at least this here takes place between seasons 1 and 2 of Vrains. There are some mild outright changes, for example, Ai's still popping into Yusaku's life from time to time. I don't have every little exact detail of how Vrains fits into this series planned out, so if you're not sure about something I'm probably not, either. There's still the incident that took place, and Yusaku's revenge quest is referenced, but not much more than that. It's not necessary for this here, anyway, so it's no big deal.
> 
> Following the rules of MSF, we go by dub names and dub rules here, but... Obviously, the Vrains dub isn't out, so for Vrains we'll be sticking with sub names. GX will still, as always, play by the dub names and dub rules here.
> 
> As far as this story is concerned, I don't have any actual concrete plans for this to continue, but this doesn't necessarily have to end here, so I will mark this as having multiple chapters for now, and leave it open for myself for the future. If you want more, I can't promise anything, except that I, too, want more. We'll see what the future brings us.
> 
> Takes some mild inspiration from multiple sources, including [this tumblr post](http://inkyindigo.tumblr.com/post/163926379209/zexal-month-week-2-day-1-any-yu-gi-oh-series), and the part of Vrains where Yusaku briefly worked at the truck. I still live for those five minutes of Vrains every single day. I hope you enjoy!

Jaden folded his hands together behind his head, his duel disk jamming uncomfortable against his head, jutting his elbows out into the air as he wandered through the plaza.

By normal human standards, for walking on foot, Jaden was pretty far from home. He was in a different area of the city entirely; the area he lived in was often referred to ‘Domino’, while this area was known simply as ‘Den’. Despite the name, there were a lot of hidden treasures here. A plaza dedicated to viewing duels on giant screens, with announcers providing live commentary. A beautiful view of the water, especially at night, which was still breathtaking to Jaden even after the incredible view the Slifer Dorms had had. And certainly not least of all, a hotdog truck that happened to make the best hotdogs Jaden could find in the city. A lot of the time, it just so happened to be located in the same plaza that showcased duels, the same plaza Jaden was in right now. The first time Jaden had found it, however, it had been located near that view of the water he never seemed to be able to get enough of.

Now that he thought about it, Jaden could go for a hot dog fight now. The discernible, delicious smell of the cooking meat only made the craving worse. And he had the money for it. He made his way over to the truck’s usual spot, happy to see it parked there again today.

As he approached, however, it was clear that something was different. The owner of the truck, Cal Kolter, was nowhere to be found. Instead, inside the truck was a boy who couldn’t be old enough to have graduated from school yet. Jaden had never seen anyone except Cal running the business or even making the hot dogs, yet this kid seemed familiar.

He tried not to dwell on that as he gave his order. The kid looked bored, maybe even annoyed as he did so, but as soon as he finished the kid started preparing the order without delay and without slack.

“So, what’s your name?” Jaden asked, watching him work on the hot dogs.

“Yusaku Fujiki,” the kid answered without looking up.

“I’m Jaden Yuki,” Jaden told him with a grin. “Nice to meet you, friend!”

“Friend?” Yusaku paused for a moment, giving Jaden a blank look. “Are we really friends? It can’t be that easy.”

“Of course it can! We’re friends, and that’s that!” Jaden replied.

Yusaku sighed and returned to the task at hand, his face still as blank as before.

"You must still be a student, right?" Jaden inquired, looking Yusaku over once more. This kid had to be in high school, he was sure of it, and yet, at this time of day... "Shouldn't you be in school right now?"

"Spring break," Yusaku replied without even stopping to think about it.

Jaden shrugged. "Alright, then. As long as you're not skipping class." Truthfully, he hadn't kept up with how school worked out in awhile. Time barely felt real to him half the time, how should he know If there was a break going on right now or not? Not to mention the fact that different schools held breaks at different times, and it wouldn't be surprising if whatever school Yusaku attended had a different subject than his had. So, really, who was he to question that?

Yusaku gave no reaction to him.

Jaden leaned his arms against the truck counter. “Have we met before?” he burst out, not able to hold off any longer. “I feel like I’ve seen you before. But I’ve never seen anyone else working here.”

“I don’t,” Yusaku said. “Kolter is the only person who works here. He’s an acquaintance of mine. He’s not here, so I’m running the truck for him today. You’re a regular, you’ve probably seen me around the truck before.”

“Now that you mention it, I think I have.” Jaden looked around outside the truck briefly, and his gaze landed on a table sitting close to the truck, off to the side. Now that his memory was jogged, he was pretty sure he’d seen Yusaku sitting at that table before. He turned back to the truck. “You know, I think I’ve seen you with a duel disk before. Do you duel?”

Yusaku stiffened, nearly dropping the tonga he was holding his hotdog with. “Not very much,” he replied slowly. “I’m not very good.”

“Hey, that’s alright! Skill’s not so important,” Jaden assured him. “All that matters is that you’re having fun while doing it.”

“I don’t find dueling to be fun,” Yusaku said. He was still speaking slowly, measuring his tone and words before letting them out. “I only duel when I have to.”

“I hear you.” Jaden frowned. “I struggled to find any enjoyment out of it for awhile myself. When I did duel, my friends were really frustrated with how I was doing it. Guess dueling in life-or-death situations does that to you, huh?”

Yusaku stared at him with wide eyes.

Oh, shoot, that was too much, wasn’t it? Most people don’t duel with their lives on the line. Now this kid probably thought he was weird, or worse, crazy. Yusaku’s real interests probably just lied elsewhere, and he’d just sprung this on him. Way to make a first impression, Jaden!

“Ah, well… My order’s probably almost done, right? How much do I owe you? I’ll get it ready while you work,” Jaden said.

Quietly, Yusaku gave him the price. Jaden pulled out the money. Yusaku didn’t raise any questions, but that expression never left his face, and he remained eerily quiet until he gave Jaden his order and Jaden left. He’s probably freaked the kid out now, oh man. Hopefully he didn’t turn the kid off from dueling completely or anything.

Jaden took a bite of his hot dog as he started to head back towards home. It tasted pretty good. The delicious smell enveloped his nose. Shoichi left his truck in good hands.

* * *

Yusaku was about eight layers deep in coding issues. Of course everything was throwing errors, that’s all his code had been doing for the past hour, why would his fixes change that? He had about ten separate google searches open, and all the red text was threatening to give him a migraine. Not from eye strain, mind you, red text on the black IDE background wasn't hurting him to look at, but from the sheer stress it was causing.

Programming was fun, programming was great. Yeah. He was well-used to the frustration of it by now, he just wished it would work. For once in his life, if the code could actually run without breaking, that’d be great. Mind you, no program was perfect and all software was bad, so that was definitely too much to ask. Without that simple truth, after all, he couldn’t be Playmaker.

At the moment, he was jumping between languages a bit more than he’d like, and this most recent exception was because he’d accidentally forgotten a semicolon int the language that required them. He hadn’t even noticed. Maybe he needed a break.

A voice broke him out of his thoughts, and he had to look around for a moment, remember where he was. Yeah, he was sitting outside the hot dog truck. The voice that brought him back to reality was the voice of a customer, and it was scarily familiar.

Yusaku glanced up at the front of the line. Right, he recognized that customer. Jaden Yuki, that guy who happened to come to the truck the one day he’d been on hot dog duty. The guy who insisted duels were fun. The guy who made the comment about dueling for his life. Had he been a victim of the incident? Or some other event that was equally as messed up? Either way, the type of dueling he’d eluded to was one Yusaku was all too familiar with. Anyone else who knew dueling like that was rare, so at least on that day, Jaden Yuki had certainly piqued Yusaku’s interest.

Now, Jaden was chatting away with Kolter as he made the former his order. Yusaku had missed most of their conversation, and wasn’t picking up on the words yet even now, but it sounded friendly. Kolter always got along better with others than he did.

As Yusaku was looking up, Kolter and Jaden turned to look at him. Jaden waved, to which Yusaku gave no response. There was no reason to wave back to someone who was mostly a stranger.

"...Right over there." Yusaku's brain finally tuned in to Kolter's words. Wait, were they talking about him? "You know, it's good to hear that Yusaku's making new friends. It's not really his strong suit. He barely even talks to anyone at school, even though he, ah, has more free time on his hands now."

"We're not friends," Yusaku shot back. "We've barely met. You can't be friends with a complete stranger."

Jaden laughed. "Not complete strangers!" he corrected as he received his order. "We know each other's names, don't we?"

Yusaku groaned. Jaden plopped down in the seat next to him, hot dog still in hand.

"One: Either of us could've given the other a fake name," Yusaku started off, raising his left index finger into the air. "Two." He raised a second finger. "A name by itself is very little information. There's a lot more to a person than a name. Three." He raised a third finger. "Knowing someone's name doesn't make them your friend. You can also know the names of your enemies, and people you've never met."

"Yeah, that's certainly true," Jaden agreed. "But given that we haven't had the chance to talk much, I'd say we're off to a great start, wouldn't you?"

Yusaku raised his left hand up to squeeze his temples. He sighed.

"Man, these hot dogs taste even better than they smell," Jaden commented as he took a bite. "Anyway, I'm not here just to chat. Cal said you might be able to help me out with something, if you don't mind."

"Help you with what," Yusaku muttered drily. As interested as Jaden had him, he was grating at his nerves almost as badly as Shima did at times. He was going to need three very good reasons to help him out, though Kolter's constant glances over in their direction might be one. Jaden seemed to consider Kolter a friend as well, and Kolter might not be happy if he didn't help out Jaden.

"Well, see, my duel disk started doing this weird thing the other day," Jaden explained. "Not too long after we met, actually, now that I think about it. See, I play an Elemental Hero deck, and my deck relies a lot on fusing monsters together. But, uh, now whenever I do a fusion summon, my duel disk starts playing the Power Rangers theme song?" Out of the corner of his eye, Yusaku noticed the screen on his duel disk glow for just a second. He already had a good idea what happened, and he suspected Kolter did, too. But Jaden kept rambling. "Specifically the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers theme, which I guess it has good taste since it picked the best one, but I didn't even know my duel disk could do that! And Jesse told me if my duel disk played that song one more time he was going to evict me, and Chazz won't duel me at all, even without my duel disk. And I was going to ask Bastion if he could fix it but I got hungry so I came here first, and Cal said you might be able to help, I can pay you for it if you like, and--"

Now, Yusaku only had one reason to help Jaden out, but it was more than enough for him.

After his revenge was over, he'd released Ai and told him he could go wherever he wanted. And Ai did, certainly. But he still hung around a fair amount, too, sticking around Yusaku's duel disk and talking about how they were connected, and how he couldn't just leave his friend like that. As if Ai was Yusaku's friend, either. Yusaku didn't really care where Ai was either way, as long as Ai didn't do anything to out his identity as Playmaker. But Yusaku recognized Ai's handiwork when he saw it. If Ai was going to pull stunts like this, he was seriously reconsidering just locking Ai out of his duel disk for good. But for now, Ai needed to fix his own messes. But still,

"I can help," Yusaku interrupted, standing up. Of course he was going to make Ai do it. It was Ai's fault, after all. But it's not like Yusaku was going to out himself to Jaden, either. And if Yusaku revealed that his own rouge AI was responsible for this, Jaden was bound to put the pieces together eventually. It was far too soon to trust anyone uninvolved with that secret. Jaden's own involvement, whether he was a victim of the incident or not, was still very unclear. So, for now he'd put up the facade. "Show me what it's doing."

Jaden flashed him a grin. "Does that mean we get to duel?"

"Two turns." Yusaku held up two fingers. "You get the turn after mine to perform a fusion summon. Once you do the summon, we stop the duel."

It's not like he wanted to duel at all, even just for two turns. Sure, Jaden could just play the cards right now outside of a duel, but it would be more reliable to recreate the situation causing this. From a bug-fixing standpoint, at least. He could handle two turns if it ended in a draw.

"Well, it's still kind of like a duel, right?" Jaden asked. "Alright then. I guess you wanted the first turn?"

Yusaku probably could've gotten away with one turn, and giving Jaden the first turn. He wasn't sure why he'd given these conditions.

They both stood up and activated their duel disks. The duel mode on their duel disks engaged, locking them against each other. Yusaku drew his starting hand. Worthless, he'd never be able to win like this. But that wasn't the point. He didn't need to win here, neither of them could win by his conditions anyway, and besides, this was his fake deck. Made to throw people off. He didn't need to win...

Forcing his face to remain neutral, Yusaku slapped a card down on his duel disk. Ancient Elf, in attack mode. Not good enough. No, it doesn't matter.

"I end my turn," he told Jaden.

A small crowd began to gather around, eager to watch a duel in progress, any duel. They'd be disappointed when they realized what was going on here, but that wasn't Yusaku's concern. For now, he tuned them out and focused on Jaden. It'd be over soon.

"Sweet! My turn!" Jaden pulled out his cards and frowned. "Uh, I can't fuse with this hand. Should I shuffle and re-draw? Since I only get one turn, and you wanted to make sure you saw..."

"Go ahead," Yusaku told him.

He was familiar with Elemental Hero decks, if only a little. There was a pro duelist around that sometimes played Elemental Heroes, and he wasn't trying to keep up with pro dueling at all, but Shima practically forced him into it (along with the duel club whenever Shima dragged him to a meeting). Yusaku knew they were versatile, and that almost any combination of heroes could fuse together. He was almost surprised Jaden hadn't pulled out a hand that could perform a fusion from the start. But maybe that just reflected the quality of his deck. It shouldn't take him long to get a useful hand, anyway.

Jaden returned his hand to his deck and shuffled before drawing six new cards. The crowd began murmuring around them, but no one audibly questioned it. Focus, Yusaku.

"Cool! This should work!" Jaden plucked a card out of his hand and activated it. "I play the spell Polymerization! And I activate the effect of The Dark - Hex-Sealed Fusion from my hand! I can substitute it in for a fusion material monster. I fuse together The Dark and Sparkman. Come on out, the hero that burns a bright path towards victory, Elemental Hero Shining Flare Wingman!"

_GO GO POWER RANGERS!_

Then it started. The loud, distorted song made most of the spectators jump. The loud guitar riffs, the theme song that barely had any lyrics...it was very 90's, for sure. A few members of the audience covered their ears; Yusaku nearly did as well. It continued as the two fusion materials appeared as holograms on the field, then merged together. Slowly, the song faded out as Shining Flare Wingman appeared on the field.

Yusaku stared up at the hologram. Really, Ai? Really?

"Uh, I guess that's game?" Jaden laughed a little as he deactivated his duel disk and the holograms disappeared. "So, uh, that's what happens, anyway. I don't know why. You can fix it, right?"

What were Ai's motivations here, anyway? Who was he trying to mess with? Was he pulling this prank against Jaden, or against Yusaku by forcing his involvement?

"Yusaku?"

Yusaku shook himself back into reality. The crowd around them was dispersing, after that loud intrusion and with the duel seemingly over. "Yes, I can fix it. Can I borrow your duel disk? You can hold onto your deck."

"Nah, I--" Jaden tilted his head, seeming to consider something. "Okay, okay, fine." Reluctantly, Jaden pulled his deck out of the duel disk and handed the latter to Yusaku. "If you figure this out, you'll be a life saver, dude. Really, I think Jesse might kill me if it doesn't stop. I really appreciate it."

Yusaku shrugged and sat Jaden's duel disk on the table next to his laptop. He reclaimed his seat, Jaden doing the same next to him. Then he pulled out his phone.

"Your phone?" Jaden asked. "But I thought you..." He glanced at Yusaku's laptop.

"Google," Yusaku told him.

"Doesn't your laptop have Google?"

"Two screens. This is faster."

"Alright, then." Jaden shrugged and propped himself up against the table with an elbow. "There's no rush, though. I've got plenty of time."

This won't take long. On his phone, Yusaku pulled up a message app rather than a search engine. He couldn't tell Ai to fix this in front of Jaden, obviously, but he had other methods of talking to Ai. He'd been prepared for this type of situation before his revenge had been over, after all, and they'd done this before. Sure enough, Yusaku received a message on his phone before he even had time to type anything out.

_So, Yusaku, you've come to ask the superior AI to help you out? Of course, a task such as this is too much for any human to handle._

Yusaku rolled his eyes and typed back, _I know you did this._

 _I don't know what you're talking about_ , Ai sent back.

 _SOL Technologies is still looking for you, right?_ Yusaku told him. _I can still hand you over to them._

_You wouldn't!_

_Are you sure?_

_Okay, okay, maybe I did mess with his duel disk_ , Ai admitted. _But it was funny, right? Since the Power Rangers combine their robots to make Megazord, I thought it was a good comparison. None of you have any sense of humor._

 _Fix it_ , Yusaku sent. _You're the one responsible, so clean up your own mess._

_Fine._

Yusaku switched to his laptop. Carefully, he pulled a small cord out of the duel disk and plugged it in, allowing him to access the code. His part of the task was done, but he still had to keep up appearances. He glanced over at Jaden. In the brief moment he convinced Ai to fix everything, Jaden had started dozing off.

"You're falling asleep," Yusaku told him.

"Huh?" Jaden's head shot up into the air. Yusaku took a closer look at his face; Jaden's eyes were a bit pink. "Sorry about that, didn't sleep well last night. Bad dreams, you know?"

He knew very well about that. Yusaku shot him another look. Just who was Jaden Yuki? Before he could dwell on it, he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, and webt back to the task at hand.

Before too long, Ai gave him a subtle sign; he was finished. Yusaku gave it a few seconds longer, then safely unplugged the duel disk. "It should be all set. Want to try it out?"

A quick test confirmed that the song no longer played from Jaden's duel disk. He shot Yusaku a big grin.

"Thanks, pal! I knew I could count on you!" Reaching into his pocket, Jaden threw some money on the table. "I owe you, big time. Catch you later!"

Before Yusaku could even think to protest payment for a job he didn't do, Jaden was gone. Clearly, he would need more time to crack the mystery that was Jaden Yuki, and from the sounds of it, Jaden would be back to give him that opportunity.

Well, he was a fusion duelist, for starters.

There was no big threat to the world now, and Yusaku he declared his quest for revenge finished. But that didn't mean that something couldn't happen in the future. And when it did, he'd need to be ready for it. He needed to keep getting stronger.

Fusion, huh...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dueling club has its regular meeting at school, and Yusaku recognizes someone's voice...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're back with more bacon saver! gosh, the response on this has been so much better and so much more than i ever imagined for this. thank you so much, i'm glad everyone liked chapter one! and i hope you like this one, too. to everyone asking for more, i hear you, and i want more, too. i will absolutely do my best to keep this going. this chapter stayed in the same part of my updating rotation as last time, but it's not officially a regular part of the rotation, so i'm sorry that this might not have like, super often or regular updates. i've really enjoyed this though, i want it to keep going, and i want to do my best for it. bacon saver isn't over! but i really appreciate everyone who read and everyone who's enjoyed it! i'm excited for the possibilities!
> 
> it's touched upon here but never outright stated, but this isn't like a mystery yusaku is trying to solve and it's not supposed to be like, a mystery to you, the reader, either. there's no reason to keep it ambiguous or anything and i don't want it to be like, a mystery. yusaku doesn't care enough to think about it, though, and jaden might not bring it up. so, uh, what's the ship name? i think it's competitorshipping? is canon in return to the different dimension, and this is the same universe and all so it's definitely canon here, too. there's like, soooome rumor among fans in-universe about chazz and jaden being together, but nothing with jesse either way. their relationship isn't like super public itself or anything, but for anyone who isn't reading return from the different dimension, now you know. i just want it to be very clear here.
> 
> this chapter still takes place between seasons one and two. everything in the vrains canon being in this universe is still as ambiguous as before, i haven't decided on anything, but i'm toying with some ideas in my head that i'm leaning towards, and if i decide on them, bacon saver will probably update more as i stop dancing around it all and get deeper into what i want to accomplish here. it'll be easier to work on this when i have those details settled. (these details might help pull arc v into the universe as well :3c but that would be another separate story in this series) when that's settled i will definitely let you know in the next chapter update after that, and i'm very excited in how vrains might fit with everything else! i hope you enjoy this chapter, and i hope i'll see you again here soon!

“Hey, Yusaku!” Yusaku glanced up from packing hos bag to see Shima standing in front of him, a big smile on his face. “You coming to the meeting?”

The meeting. Duel club. Right. Yusaku glanced down at his bag. “I have a lot of homework,” he began, making eye contact with the folder he kept his homework in. It was empty. He finished packing everything else and zipped the bag closed.

“You can finish it later! Come on, we’re going to be late!” Shima grabbed Yusaku by the wrist and pulled him to the meeting room.

There went any chance of escape.

Yusaku clutched his bag in his free hand tightly as they ran. Joining the school’s duel club had been a means to an end, and even then, it had been an accident. The duel club no longer held anything of value to him. No information, no relations to relevant persons, nothing of the like. There was no reason for him to remain a member or to continue to attend meetings. And for the most part, he didn’t. Most meeting days, he just went home. Today, however, Shims seemed determined to change that.

Well, Yusaku could make it useful, at least. He had no reason to duel right now, so he didn’t. He didn’t care for unnecessary duels, only took out his cards when he had no other choice. But he was sure that someday he’d be forced to duel again. And at that time, everyone else would have continued to improve and grow stronger. He’s fall behind, and inevitably lose. So he didn’t want to duel, but he still needed to improve his strategies. The duel club often analyzed the moves and decks of other duelists, usually pros.

This could prove useful after all.

So Yusaku didn’t protest when Shima pulled them both into the meeting, and he didn’t make any excuses to leave. He ignored the surprised looks on everyone’s faces. (Seeing how Shima literally dragged him in, though, they definitely weren’t as surprised as they would be if he’d come in alone.) Everyone took a seat, the meeting was called to order, and it went on from there.

There’d been a big duel in the pros the night before, apparently. About half the club had seen it, while most of the rest had either been busy or forgotten. But today, the club was going to go over strategies and pick apart moves from the duel, watching a recording for reference. Good. This was exactly what Yusaku was hoping for.

Before that, however, there’d been an interview with the winner during class earlier, and most of the club was eager to watch that first. Yusaku didn’t mind having a few minutes to zone out.

The duelist being interviewed... all of Shima’s updates on the pro dueling world must be paying off (from Shima’s point of view), because Yusaku actually recognized him. Chazz Princeton. Most of the professionals, Yusaku either could recall their name or how they played from their face by now (normally, he only remembered both if it was someone he’d met or faced against before, which was pretty rare. Yusaku didn’t make a habit of getting to know and hanging around the Pro League duelists). This was also true for Chazz Princeton. Yusaku couldn’t remember his deck or strategy at all. He only cared for that if he could learn from it in anyway.

Some people would say you could learn something about dueling from everyone. Yusaku disagreed.

“Mr. Princeton, you seemed pretty fired up about your last duel,” the interviewer commented, just barely being on camera. From what Yusaku could tell, this didn’t seem like a planned interview. It looks like they caught Chazz Princeton outside a...store? “What inspired that level of intensity from you?”

A lot of professional duelists got a thrill out of the game itself, or from beating their competition. Yusaku expected to hear an answer like that.

The actual answer surprised him.

“First off, you can call me The Chazz.” Chazz Princeton glared into the camera. “I don’t care for opponents who think you need the strongest or best cards to win. The strength of a card doesn’t come from its stats or its effect. A truly strong duelist makes the best of what they have, no matter what it is.”

“Is that why you chose your zero attack deck for the duel, then?” the interviewer pressed.

“He’s one of the most versatile pro duelists in the Pro League right now,” Shima whispered helpfully to Yusaku. “The Chazz has built all kind of decks, and always uses whatever one is best for the situation. Last night he used his Ojama deck.”

“Ojama,” Yusaku repeated. He think he recognized the name. Ojamas were pretty weak on their own, right? No attack, little defense, and no effect. Only by utilizing all the brothers and their associated spells did they become powerful.

“None of the monsters in that deck have any attack,” Shima supplied. “It’s amazing.”

And he’d won the duel? Yusaku frowned. Maybe he had a lot more to learn from this duel than he’d thought.

“I didn’t just need to beat my opponent, I had to show them how wrong they were,” Chazz Princeton answered the interviewer’s question.

“There’s no such thing as a bad card,” someone added from off-screen. “It’s how you play them. Real duelists can win using their favorites, no matter how weak they might seem.”

Yusaku blinked. He knew that voice.

There, just on the edge of the screen. A patch of red, probably an arm, holding onto some bags. There was only one person who wore a jacket as obnoxiously red as that.

“Jaden?” Yusaku asked himself.

That must’ve come out louder than he’d thought. Everyone in the room stared at him.

“You know Jaden Yuki?” someone asked.

It was no secret to the duel club that Yusaku barely followed proffesional dueling, and didn’t know much more than what they told him about it. His knowledge, or at least the knowledge he showed, primarily came from Shima or from club meetings. Jaden had never come up before at a meeting Yusaku had attended, not that he could remember. Shima certainly hadn’t mentioned him. He had no idea why Jaden was on tv, but apparently it was a big deal that Yusaku already knew who he was.

Most knowledge related to the pros, any pros at all (though usually it was specifically about entertainment duelists) that Yusaku gathered himself, he hid from the club. He couldn’t risk revealing himself as Playmaker. But Jaden couldn’t out him in any way. On this, he could at least be truthful.

“Someone I know runs a hot dog truck,” Yusaku explained. “I helped him out once, ran it for him. Jaden showed up then, he seems to be a regular. Ever since, he keeps claiming that we’re friends.”

Skye nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. “I went there while you were working, too.”

“I can’t believe you’re friends with him! That’s amazing!” Shima added.

“He’s not my friend,” Yusaku corrected, turning back towards the interview. “Why’s he in this interview, anyway?”

“You didn’t know?” someone asked. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. He usually tries to stay out of the spotlight, except in situations like this. He’s easy to miss if you don’t pay much attention to the Pro League.”

“Jaden is Chazz’s dueling adviser, officially,” someone else explained. “He does the same for some of the other pros his age, too. Apparently some of them went to school together. Before duels, he’ll help analyze opponent strategies and figure out how to best counter them, or something like that. With Chazz, sometimes he’ll help him pick which deck to use.”

“Unofficially, though, some rumors have been spreading,” the first student interjected, with a glint in their eye. “According to some, he might jump into the Pro League himself. Supposedly, he could even be better than his classmates, so he’d have a pretty decent shot at it. Others pay attention to exactly how and when he shows up in the media. Usually it’s situations like this,” they nodded towards the interview, “getting caught while going out for groceries or shopping for something else. Usually he shows up with Chazz, in interviews specifically with Chazz. Naturally, there’s a lot of speculation that he and Chazz are together.”

“It’s not good to spread rumors like that,” Skye muttered from her seat. “Whether he joins the Pro League and who he’s dating are his business. If he wanted everyone to know, we’d know.”

From the interview, Chazz Princeton spoke up, his voice cutting into the conversation. “Look, as much as I’d love to stick around here and talk about how I won, I’m kind of in a hurry, here.” He held up a hand so the camera got a glimpse of the milk he was carrying in it. “Maybe we can continue this some other time.”

The interview ended shortly after, and the club shifted into watching the duel. Yusaku shifted in his seat, watching closely so he could witness the duelists in action. If there was ever a duel to learn from, this had to be it.

* * *

"I know, I know, the arcade's a lot of fun."

Yusaku paused in his walk back home. Usually this route was quiet; if he saw anyone, they almost never talked, whether it was to him or someone else. It's why he took the route in the first place. He valued the solitude, didn't want to waste the time on other people, and if something happened to delay his routine, then people were less likely to notice. Anything, no matter how small, to keep his identity safe.

Yet, here he was. Jaden Yuki, loudly barging into his life yet again.

It was Jaden who had spoken. He appeared to be talking to the empty air just above him. Now, it looked like he was listening, with a frown on his face.

"I hear ya," Jaden agreed with…something. "I bet hanging out with all those stuffed toys is lots of fun. Some of them looked a bit like you, too, didn't they? But I don't feel like it's the best idea. If some little kid saw you and wanted you for their prize, well, the guy in charge of the prizes can't see you at all. It could cause a scene, you know? Sometimes kids don't want to give up until they get what they want, either. You wouldn't want to get kids banned from the arcade just because they could see you, right?"

Yusaku kept watching as Jaden paused again, nodding along to the silence.

"It's not just that, either. That arcade is never running low on prize tickets, but they already ran out when I walked in. You can't just hoard all the prize tickets, you know. If no one can win anything, they'll stop going to the arcade, and you won't be able to hang out in there when the arcade closes down." He groaned in frustration just after finishing that sentence. "I know you like to hoard, I know. I'm not the dragon expert or anything, but cut me some slack here, man."

At that moment, he happened to look in Yusaku's direction. Yusaku still hadn't been able to get himself to stop observing whatever was unfolding here. As they made eye contact, Jaden straightened up and grinned, calling out to him. With a sigh, Yusaku walked over to where Jaden was standing.

"What're you doing around here?" Jaden asked, occasionally glancing over at the air he'd been talking to before.

"I could ask you the same thing," Yusaku pointed out. "Who were you talking to?"

Jaden looked from up at the air back to Yusaku. "You can't see him, can you?"

"I don't see anything there," Yusaku replied, looking briefly at the empty air Jaden kept staring at.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised." Jaden sighed. "It's still not common for people to be able to see Duel Spirits, is it? So many of my friends can, it's easy to forget."

See Duel Spirits? Yusaku looked back at the empty air. What did Jaden see there that he couldn't? Further investigation didn't reveal any more answers; there still wasn't anything there. "I can see the holograms when people duel, but no one's dueling right now."

"No, that's not what I mean." Jaden shook his head. "Don't worry about it. So, uh…" He rubbed the back of his neck. "…seen any good duels lately? No, wait, you don't like dueling, sorry about that. Forget I asked."

"It's fine," Yusaku told him. "I got roped into joining the duel club at school awhile back. I don't duel there, but they watch Pro League duels sometimes. We watched Chazz Princeton's duel from yesterday."

"You saw Chazz's duel?" Jaden grinned. "I mean, I had no doubt he would win, this is Chazz we're talking about. But it was so much fun to watch, made me wish I was dueling there, too. He really Chazzed it up in that duel."

"I didn't pay much attention," Yusaku lied. "But it was interesting, seeing him win with an Ojama deck. Ojamas aren't used very often, but I can tell a lot of thought and strategy went into that deck. He must really like them."

"Yeah, the Ojamas are one of his favorites," Jaden answered. "He did most of the work on that deck himself, too. Of course, I ended up helping with some of it, because he hates building decks. He just wants it to already be done so he can win with it. That's Chazz for you, impatient as always."

"We saw an interview, too," Yusaku added. "You were in it. The club said that you're supposed to be…his duel adviser?"

"Officially I am, I guess," Jaden said with a shrug. "Him, and Jesse, and sometimes Sy. I think I gave Aster a suggestion about a card once, too. But I don't really do all that much. I might help them tweak their decks, or give Chazz my opinion on which one he should use. But I think most people with the job do more than that. I'm not in the position to do much more than that, honestly. Everyone keeps pushing me to go pro, Sy especially, but it can't work out for me right now. I know Jess did the same thing I would be doing, but...this is different."

"Sounds like the rumors aren't true, then," Yusaku noted under his breath.

"That one, at least," Jaden confirmed. "I don't pay much attention to any rumors." He leaned forward, smirking. "You're not thinking of stealing Chazz's strategies, are you? Trying to go big with an Ojama deck? I'll warn you, he's got a special connection with them. I don't think anyone could run Ojamas better than Chazz does."

"No," Yusaku answered flatly.

Jaden laughed. "I'm joking, you don't seem like you'd be the type to want to use them. It's not a bad thing, Ojamas definitely aren't for everyone."

Yusaku shrugged. That wasn't surprising.

"But, hey. I know you don't like dueling a lot, and this isn't me pushing you back into it. I get it. But if you ever get back into it, and want some deck advise or any kind of help, hit me up," Jaden offered. "I can get pretty busy, and I'm usually hard to find, but I love talking about cards. And I'm always down to help my friends."

Yusaku tilted his head. He wasn't dueling now, but inevitably, he'd have to pick his deck up again. Until that time came, he couldn't sit idly by, let everyone advance without him. He needed to keep improving, because when he would duel again, he'd need to win. Losing would never be an option. Jaden was good enough to be a pro, supposedly, and stayed in contact with quite a few of the more recent but still popular pro duelists. He gave them advice. He might not be the worst ally to have, someday. His knowledge and ability to strategize could end up useful in helping Yusaku keep up with the pack.

"Maybe. I'll think about it," he replied. "We're still not friends, though."

Jaden just smiled at that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaden grabs lunch, and learns about a whole new way of dueling, and a new place to do it...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm a couple of weeks behind on vrains, but the past few episodes (that i've seen) have helped me finally resolve how vrains fits into this universe, and i'm very excited about it, and wanted to work it in right away. link vrains does exist here, so much of season one of vrains is gonna be canon to this universe as is. and i don't want to get into all the details of it now, but i've also decided that with including link vrains, that it's perfect for more duels than just speed duels and "master" duels. with that change, i've decided charisma duelists will be renamed as entertainment duelists as well. now that it's figured out there's no way i won't go into it more eventually, but this here is more of an introduction to it all than anything, and i gotta keep some secrets up my sleeve, right?
> 
> i haven't updated anything in awhile, and i'm sorry, it's been busy and i ended up aggravating an injury last week so i've been trying to recover and keep up and relax when i can, and i haven't had the energy most of the time, but i really wanted to get this out. i'm sorry about the long wait for me updating anything, including this, but i hope it was worth it! hopefully next week i can start getting into the swing of updating everything the way i was before.
> 
> for this chapter, it's important to note that bacon saver is post-arc v.

When Jaden followed his stomach again to his favorite hot dog truck, something was off.

Or, well, it’s not like he started coming here all that long ago. And he didn’t spend much time in this plaza, either. Maybe it was normal here, and his timing before had been off.

The plaza was filled with large television screens. Often, when Jaden came by, there were duels being shown here, mostly from the pro leagues; he’d seen Chazz on at least once. And the duels weren’t always live, sometimes they put on reruns. Right now, though? There was a duel going on, sure, but Jaden didn’t recognize the duelists nor the setting. This didn’t look like the pros. And the duelists were…moving around, which was highly unusual for any kind of duel. Dueling usually involved standing in one spot, not running around and diving for cards.

He had to admit, though, it looked fun.

After Jaden placed his order, he asked about it.

“You’ve never seen Action Duels before? Or Entertainment Duels?” Cal asked.

Jaden shook his head. “Haven’t heard of either.”

“Well, you’re in for a treat,” Cal replied. “Entertainment Duelists try to entertain both their opponents and their audience. It’s a different world from the pro leagues. There’s a lot less pressure to win, and a lot of audience members are happy no matter who wins the duel. Action Duels are about working with your monsters to pick up cards on the field to give you an edge in the duel, and they’re pretty popular with Entertainment Duelists. They’re popular in Vrains in general, since they’re hard to do with just holograms.”

“Vrains?” Jaden asked.

“Link Vrains lets duelists duel each other in virtual reality,” Cal explained. “It’s different from KaibaCorp’s Duel Links, though there’s a lot of similarities. Vrains is developed by a separate company, and it lets you create unique avatars and has different types of duels. It’s only really local to Den, though. People from outside come in to use it, but it can’t be accessed anywhere else.”

“It sounds pretty rad.” Jaden stretched his arms out. “I wish more of my duels were like that. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed school more.”

In the back of his mind, Yubel insisted he would be awful at these duels, but they were quickly ignored.

“Well, this duel is a good introduction to Vrains and its duels.” Cal pulled out his hoard of hot dog buns. “It’s a rerun, unfortunately, since Vrains is down right now. But Blue Angel against Supreme Zarc was a highly anticipated duel. It’s still a favorite among many fans.”

“You sure know a lot about these duels,” Jaden noted.

“Serving food in a plaza like this, you pick up a few things,” Cal said.

“I think it’s cool!” Jaden told him. When his order was finished, he paid and reached out to take his hot dog. “I just, I never knew about this whole other side to dueling, you know? Now I’m curious about all the top entertainment duelists, and what their strategies are… I kinda wish I could duel them all.”

“Well, maybe when Link Vrains’ maintenance is finished, you can get the chance,” Cal replied. “Yusaku knows more about the top Vrains duelists and their strategies than I do. You’d be better off asking him about that.”

* * *

“Kolter said that you sounded interested in Link Vrains.”

Jaden blinked at him, stopping full force on his ramblings about poor road conditions. “Uh, I guess,” he said. “I don’t know much about it, honestly. But I wasn’t sure how much you’d want to talk about it. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Yusaku shook his head. “It’s fine. I know more than I’d want to about it from the duel club. The knowledge should go to someone who at least wants it.”

“Sweet.” Jaden twirled an empty straw paper around his fingers. “So, what kind of strategies do duelists use there, anyway? I’m curious how people would approach Action Duels differently than a standard duel.”

It was after school hours now, or at least Jaden assumed. Yusaku had swung by before Jaden had finished his food, so now they were sitting together, Jaden hanging around while Yusaku went through his homework. He felt bad that he wasn’t much help with that, but honestly, Yusaku didn’t seem to need it. He breezed through some answers easily, while skipping over others Jaden assumed he couldn’t figure out the answers to. Yusaku must be setting those aside for later. Well, Jaden hoped, anyway.

Now, Yusaku’s focus was on Jaden, rather than his homework.

“Entertainment Duelists are…something,” Yusaku told him. “Their focus isn’t solely on just winning the duel, so their strategies reflect that. I only know about a few of the top ones… Gore likes to let himself be backed into a corner before coming out on top. He lets his opponents get cocky, so then they get careless. Some Entertainment Duelists stay private about their regular lives, but Gore doesn’t mind letting his be more public. He often donates some of his earnings.”

“Seems like a nice enough dude,” Jaden commented, untwirling his paper. “He certainly knows how to keep his audience on their toes.”

“It’s a form of entertainment,” Yusaku responded. He held two fingers into the air. “Blue Angel is more private, no one knows about her regular life. She runs a Trickstar deck; her monsters may not be the strongest, but she sets up combos to deal more and more effect damage to her opponents before they can overpower her.”

“Oof, sounds tricky,” Jaden said. “I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.”

“And, third,” Yusaku went on. He held up three fingers. “Supreme Zarc specializes more in Action Duels, whereas Gore and Blue Angel lean more towards Speed Duels, though the three of them often switch between the two. He quickly swarms his field with monsters.  He tends to perform bigger summons with them, too; Fusion Summons, and he’s been one of the pioneers for Synchro Sumons in Vrains itself. They say he’s constantly trying to improve himself to create bigger and better duels with more spectacular monsters than the last.”

“Creative.” Jaden frowned at the table. “They all sound skilled and cool. I don't know how I'd beat them, but I kinda wish I could try.”

“Vrajns is undergoing maintenance now,” Yusaku told him. “But maybe when it finishes, you could try.”

“You’re forgetting one of the most popular duelists!” Cal called out from his truck.

“Who,” Yusaku shot back.

“Playmaker!”

Yusaku sighed. “There’s also Playmaker. He’s not an Entertainment Duelist so much as he is a hacker. No one knows anything about him, not even SOL Technologies. I don’t know much about his strategies, but they say he’s never lost a duel.”

“Never lost a duel?” Jaden asked. He scratched his chin. “He must be really good. I bet he'd be fun to duel, too.”

“They say he turns down most duel requests,” Yusaku told him. “You might not have as much luck with him.”

“I think it might still be worth a shot,” Cal offered from his truck. “You never know until you try, right?”

“Exactly!” Jaden answered.

Yusaku turned his head to look at Cal, but Jaden missed his expression.

Jaden had been to Duel Links in the past, out of necessity. The Light of Destruction had been beginning to surface there, and he’d needed to take care of it. He didn’t have much of an impression of Duel Links, other than that indirectly, logging in there had forced him to keep in better contact with his friends going forward. Maybe he should go back sometime, give it another shot… Though, Duel Links was very popular with many duelists, and even for that brief time, it’d felt too crowded for Jaden. Link Vrains, as it was designed, sounded smaller, and easier to handle. New methods of dueling and new duelists entirely could make it fun, too. It was a shame it was down, he couldn’t even check it out himself right now.

Jaden glanced at Yusaku. He still felt bad about this whole conversation, given Yusaku’s feelings on dueling. Jaden kept bringing up uncomfortable topics, alluding memories that must seem ridiculous for someone like Yusaku, not to mention the one time Yusaku caught him talking to what must have looked like empty air to him. Boy, he was leaving a bad impression on Yusaku, huh? Jaden was still surprised Yusaku still tolerated him being around. Yusaku must’ve thought he was nuts.

“Hey, you’re a hacker, too, like Playmaker, right?” Jaden asked.

He almost missed Yusaku barely wince at that. “I’m a programmer, not a hacker,” Yusaku corrected. “I’m not trying to…break into anything or erase information, I’m just…I write programs, edit programs, fix computer issues.”

“Right, right.” Jaden shrugged. Honestly, it made no difference to him. “So you’re on the computer a lot, right? Are you taking care of your eyes?”

“My…eyes?” Yusaku asked.

“Yeah. See, Chazz went to the eye doctor recently, and it turns out his eyes are like, really dry, which is probably bad,” Jaden said. “So the eye doctor is trying to get him to take care of his eyes more. Help them get less dry, take medication, it’s a whole thing. Apparently, Chazz says, being on the computer a lot can dry out your eyes and stuff.”

“The computer,” Yusaku repeated.

“Not that computers are bad!” Jaden backpedaled. “I mean, it’s fine! And all the stuff you can do on the computer is super cool, and I’d never be able to figure that stuff out. Just like, you’re taking care of your eyes, right? Making sure they’re okay? I just, well, don’t want anything to happen, you know?”

Yusaku frowned. “I make my computer screen display more yellow light instead of blue,” he replied. “I know that helps.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Jaden agreed. “Just be careful, alright?”

“You don’t have to worry too much,” Yusaku told him.

“Of course I do! I worry because I care. That’s what friends are for!”

“We’re not friends."

“Don't be like that, of course we are!”

Yusaku rubbed at his eyes. "If you're going to insist, I suppose I can look into it," he decided. "About my eyes, I mean."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A request is made, to Jaden Yuki...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh glitch, it's been so long! thanks for being patient and for coming back, and if you're new here, hello! things have been crazy for me lately... between job interviews, homework, i finished up my independent study i think since the last time this updated, other writing commitments, class... i've known what this chapter was going to be for a couple of months, but i just didn't have the time to come back to this. and now i do! i hope this chapter is worth the wait, sorry it took so long, and i hope you enjoy!
> 
> patch notes! we've officially upgraded to the vrains dub, rather than the sub. i wanted to wait until i'd watched some of the dub, now i'm seven episodes in and i'm more comfortable and confident making this switch. the entire story's been updated to this (you may have noticed this a couple of days ago if you were reading this then), but the only thing that's really changed is names. if you're not familiar with the dub (and if you haven't watched the dub, i recommend it! i'm a bit biased, but i think the vrains dub is great!) then here's the relevant changes: kusanagi is now kolter, go onizuka is now gore, aoi is now skye (but blue angel is still the same!), and cafe nagi is now cafe nom. this should hopefully make reading this story less weird, and it was always sort of my intention for this to happen, anyway. i hope this isn't very upsetting to anyone, and thank you for understanding. this change is part of the reason this update took as long as it did.
> 
> lastly, this is a long one! maybe not really long compared to many other things, but this chapter is a little less than half the length of the previous three chapters combined, apparently. in fact, this is so long that what i originally intended for this chapter has been split in half. which works for me, because beyond this point i had two separate ideas for what could happen, and this gives me the opportunity to use both ideas and expand on what was originally meant to be a shorter and less focused on part of this chapter. so, next chapter will be sort of a continuation of this one. i'm excited for what's coming up in bacon saver, and i hope you are as well! this story's reception is still so much more than i expected and i'm so glad so many people have read and liked it, thank you all so much! bacon saver will continue! see you all soon!!

“Why do you have a cat here,” Yusaku asked flatly, staring down at the large, striped cat at Jaden's feet.

"Oh, that's Pharaoh." Jaden laughed as Pharaoh circled around his left leg, brushing against it. "I don't ever mean to take Pharaoh anywhere. He just…sorta follows me around. I've been out for a while and he's been following me the whole time."

Yusaku looked up at Jaden and leaned back against his chair, away from the table between them. "I'm pretty sure cats aren't allowed at Café Nom."

"Hey, he likes people food," Jaden protested. "He can be a paying customer."

"Oh, yeah?" They both looked over as Kolter called out to them from inside his truck. "I'll be the judge of that. Does he think hot dogs are sandwiches?"

Yusaku rolled his eyes at that, but Jaden frowned, looking down at Pharaoh again. "I don't know," Jaden replied. He leaned forward in his seat to pick up Pharaoh, turning the cat around as he lifted him up so that they were facing each other. "What do you think?" he asked Pharaoh. Pharaoh meowed at him. Jaden tilted his head to the side, seeming to consider this as an answer, before looking to Kolter again. "He says they aren't."

"Good answer!" Kusanagi said. "One hot dog coming up, then!"

Yusaku looked from Jaden down to Pharaoh, still in Jaden's arms, and then back to Jaden again. "Should a cat really be eating a hot dog?" he asked. In Yusaku's novice opinion, they probably shouldn't. Even if it wouldn't be bad for the cat, it just didn't seem right. But then, he wasn't the one who owned a cat, which Jaden apparently did. Jaden would probably know better than him, he assumed.

"Maybe not? But tell that to Pharaoh," Jaden told him.

Yusaku stared down at the cat again. Pharaoh meowed at him.

He hadn’t dropped his investigation into the mystery that was Jaden Yuki. Not that it was really an investigation, more like a vague interest. Though, he had to admit, the likelihood of Jaden being a victim of the Lost Incident was looking rather unlikely. The victims had all been children at the time, right? And while he couldn’t say for sure exactly how old Jaden was, it was clear that Jaden had graduated from high school, and now was working with pro duelists. He was probably too old to meet the criteria as a possibility.

However, it was hard to ignore the evidence that Jaden had at least been mixed up in something that wasn’t good. Despite his best efforts to diverge his attention, Yusaku always eventually found his thoughts returning to a comment Jaden had made, sounding like he’d dueled at the risk of his own life. He hadn’t forgotten, even if he hadn’t brought it up in conversation since. Even if he hadn’t been a victim of the incident, something had happened.

And even if Jaden wasn’t a victim of the incident, whatever happened could still be connected in some way.

Yusaku’s revenge had ended during the last duel he’d had with Varis. But it looked like there were still mysteries for him to uncover related to his past. Talking to Jaden hadn’t given him ant clear answers yet, though. The temptation to switch gears and see what he could learn about Jaden with his computer kept growing stronger.

A voice nearby interrupted his train of thought. It was coming from near Kolter’s truck, but it wasn’t Kolter’s voice. Still, the voice sounded familiar to Yusaku. It almost sounded like…

“Yusaku?” He tried not to wince as Skye called out his name. Evidently, she’d noticed him, too. Of all the times for her to be craving a hot dog.

It wasn’t that he disliked her, she was a fairly capable duelist and more perceptive than most. As Playmaker, he didn’t think she bore any ill will towards him, either. They’d worked together to take down the tower, after all. Still, as Yusaku, he had to admit that most of his interactions with Skye had gone poorly. Whatever her opinion of him was, it couldn’t be great. And right now, he was Yusaku.

He turned enough towards her to wave a little bit. If she had acknowledged him first, that had to be an appropriate enough greeting, right?

She waved back at him with her right hand, her left hand holding the hot dog she’d just purchased. He wasn’t sure if Skye wanted to actually talk to him or not. Then, she noticed who was sitting at the table with him, and her previous intentions no longer mattered. She quickly marched up to their table

With a sigh, Yusaku closed his laptop, which had been open on the table in front of him. He certainly wasn’t going to be able to get anything done now.

“Huh,” Skye breathed as she stopped next to their table, standing between Yusaku and Jaden. “You really are friends with Jaden Yuki.”

“He’s not my friend,” Yusaku corrected. Why did everyone keep trying to make it out like they were? Jaden was just a consistently annoying, though not entirely unwanted, presence in his life. Jaden kept insisting they were friends, too. But Yusaku knew better. If he had yet to befriend the one person who’d given him strength when he had nearly given up, then how could he be friends with someone he barely knew, and who barely knew him? And with one exception, Yusaku had no real desire to make friends, anyway.

Yet,

“Oh, hey, are you one of Yusaku’s friends, too?” Jaden asked Skye, a smile on his face. He still was holding Pharaoh, though Pharaoh looked like he might be having second thoughts about the arrangement.

Yusaku felt one of his eyes twitch. Of course, Jaden had to make things even worse. He was very good at that, wasn’t he? Yusaku hadn’t forgotten the time where it nearly looked like Jaden had found out his identity as Playmaker moments after learning about Playmaker. That’d been a scare; he needed to be more careful. As for now, this wasn’t as bad a situation, but it felt fairly close to him, personally.

“I, uh…” Skye shot Yusaku a look.

He shrugged in response. He doubted that Skye considered him a friend, either. He doubted she considered even Playmaker a friend, maybe a former comrade at best. Jaden, however, would persist no matter how much Yusaku argued. It was her choice whether she wanted to argue or not, really.

"Sweet! It's good for him to make more friends," Jaden said, not really giving Skye the choice either way.

Yusaku stifled a sigh. He didn't really need friends, but… Well, Kolter would argue with him on that one, too.

"Mr. Yuki," Skye began, but Jaden cut her off with a wave, telling her she didn't need to call him that. "Jaden," she started again. "Since you're here, is it alright if I ask you a favor?"

"Go ahead," Jaden replied.

"I'm a member of a dueling club at our school. Our school doesn't incorporate dueling into its curriculum, so our club is the best we have," Skye explained. "We try to educate ourselves about the differences between different types of duels, we duel against each other and try to improve, and we watch professional duels and try to learn from them. We're all enthusiastic learners. If you could come to one of our meetings and maybe give us some pointers, I think we could benefit a lot from it. And we'd definitely appreciate it. Please, help our club learn more about dueling."

Yusaku watched this exchange silently. He had very little doubt that Jaden would agree. Jaden had offered help to Yusaku, after all, and Jaden knew that Yusaku didn't care for the game. Plus, Jaden seemed like the type to try to help anyone, whether they asked for it or not. This was the perfect opportunity for him to do just that.

So, it surprised him when Jaden hesitated, a frown settling on his face. "Why ask me? Jaden asked. "I'm not a professional duelist."

"You aren't," Skye agreed. "But there are claims suggesting you're skilled enough to become one if you wished, though I won't pry into it. You give advice to multiple professional duelists who think very highly of you. They're very skilled in their own right, but your help was apparently invaluable in getting them to where they are now. It's quite difficult to ask professional duelists to come in as well, since their schedules can be busy and unpredictable. Dueling may not be your career, or at least your main career, but you still seem like you have a lot you can offer."

"They shouldn't feel like they have to say that about me," Jaden mumbled to himself. "It's not like I do much, they're way better than they give themselves credit for." He sighed, then began to speak up, his voice returning to a normal volume. "My schedule can be a lot more unpredictable than my friends'. I'm not a pro, but I can be pretty busy sometimes. I really don't think I'm the best choice for this, anyway. I'm sure you can work something out with someone better. Sorry."

Just then, Jaden seemed to realize that he was still holding up Pharaoh, and that Pharaoh was still staring up at him. With a sigh, Jaden put Pharaoh back down on the ground.

"Please," Skye insisted. "You don't have to be the best. Any help you could give would be more than enough. With Vrains down for maintenance, professional duels have temporarily picked up in frequency to help fill the gap, so all the professional duelists are too busy right now."

Jaden shook his head. "They aren't the only ones. I can't really schedule something like this, I don't know what my own schedule will be like coming up. I'm really sorry."

Yusaku stared at Jaden. Was he really refusing? What was different about this from when Jaden had offered Yusaku his help? He couldn't figure out why Jaden was answering like this. It didn't make sense.

"…I understand," Skye responded, taking a step back. "If you do change your mind, please let us know. The offer remains open." She looked between Yusaku and Jaden. "…Have a nice day." Taking a bite from her hot dog, she turned around and walked away, leaving the two of them alone.

Once she was gone, Yusaku couldn't let it drop. "Why did you say no?" he asked. "You've offered me help with dueling before. How is this different?"

"Hey, Pharaoh, come on," Jaden whined. He was leaning over to look under the table now. Pharaoh was below, batting at the baggy parts of his pants. "I'm not a toy."

It didn't look like Yusaku was getting an answer out of Jaden. It was another mystery to add to the pile, then.

* * *

> **Private Message: Syrus Truesdale**
> 
> **Syrus:** hey jay, i know you said you're busy right now with something and this isn't urgent
> 
> **Syrus:** but someone keeps emailing me asking if you'll go visit their duel club at their school and asking if you'll reconsider your decision
> 
> **Syrus:** are you avoiding people and your responsibilities again? not that it's anything new but you gotta stop this eventually jay
> 
> **Jaden:** wait, why did she email you, why did she think to email you
> 
> **Syrus:** i'm supposed to convince you to do it? come on jaden the fact that you help me work on my deck is common knowledge
> 
> **Jaden:** oh yeah it is
> 
> **Jaden:** it's not avoiding if i don't know any of them I just don’t want to do it.
> 
> **Syrus:** you don’t want to help people? with dueling? i must have the wrong number, do you know where i can fjnd jaden yuki?
> 
> **Jaden:** haha, okay
> 
> **Jaden:** it’s easier one-on-one, you know? that’s a whole group of kids. i know you and jess and chazz and your bro, and it’s always just one of you at a time. there’s another kid i offered to help too but he doesn’t like dueling, he won’t want to be the best and that’s a lot less pressure and i still know him better than these other kids. and it’s a school, sy.
> 
> **Syrus:** hey, jay, it’ll be okay. nothing’s gonna happen to those kids or the school just because you’re there. and if it does, they’ll be okay because you’ll be there. you don’t have to duel if you don’t want to, either. just go and answer their questions and look at their cards. maybe they can duel each other. if you don’t duel, that’ll eliminate the risk you’re worried is there.
> 
> **Syrus:** if i could go with you I would. and that goes for the rest of us, too.
> 
> **Jaden:** yeah, I know. thanks sy i'll think about it

-

> **Private Message: Chazz Princeton**
> 
> **Chazz:** hey slacker why do I keep getting emails asking you to visit some school
> 
> **Jaden:** oh man, you too??
> 
> **Chazz:** yeah and it’s really clogging up my inbox
> 
> **Chazz:** i know you know you want to help them so stop worrying about what could happen and just go

-

> **Private Message: Jesse Anderson**
> 
> **Jaden:** so it turns out that dr banner doesn’t like it when pharaoh eats a bunch of fish like all the time because then pharaoh’s breath smells really fishy and I guess ghosts can smell, so i’m getting back at him by having pharaoh eat a bunch of fish sandwiches. couple days in, banner’s already planning revenge. just to warn you when you see pharaoh, he smells fishy
> 
> **Jesse:** i feel like it’s not the best idea for a cat to be eating so many sandwiches
> 
> **Jaden:** tell that to pharaoh
> 
> **Jesse:** by the way, got a lot of emails asking you to reconsider talking at a school club? those kids won’t be like sent to another dimension because you’re there. you know that.
> 
> **Jaden:** yeah…
> 
> **Jesse:** it’ll be okay. You can do it.

-

> **Private Message: Aster Phoenix**
> 
> **Aster:** wow, this kid is really persistent about you visiting their club. i think they’re even pretending to be two different students asking about you
> 
> **Aster:** why am i even being emailed about this I don’t care what happens. it’s kind of funny though
> 
> **Jaden:** you too???

-

> **Private Message: Yusaku Fujiki**
> 
> **Jaden:** yo you can tell skye to get in touch with me and i’ll try to work out some day to meet with the club okay?? she got my friends to convince me i’ll do it

* * *

Yusaku stared at the message on his phone, trying to parse exactly what happened that lead to this text. He still couldn’t believe he gave Jaden his contact information, but he was well past that now.

Skye hadn't given up in her attempts to have Jaden visit the duel club, it seemed. All she'd done is switch tactics. He'd never thought she was someone who would give up easily, but her persistence still caught him off guard nonetheless. He could still remember when that same persistence made her into a victim of the Knights of Hanoi, but at least this had no chance of backfiring for her. The worst Jaden could really do is keep saying no.

So, she'd stopped asking Jaden directly and gone after his friends. Why did she think to do that? How did she get in contact with them?

As those question crossed his mind, Ai popped out of his duel disk. "You don't have to be an expert hacker to do what she did. Jaden works with professional duelists, and it's pretty easy to find out which ones from a simple search on the internet. Most professional duelists have an email or some other method of contact publicly available. If those professional duelists work with Jaden, they're sure to have a better idea about his schedule than she is. After all, Jaden could've been lying about his unpredictable schedule. So she asked them about it. Anyone with a computer or a phone could do it easily. But, having advanced hacking knowledge certainly doesn't help, either."

Yusaku frowned.

"I emailed his friends, too!" Ai announced with what would definitely be a grin if he had a mouth.

"Why would you do that?" Yusaku asked.

"I knew it would annoy you to have to deal with Jaden at school, too," Ai answered.

Yusaku sighed. Of course, Ai's motive was to annoy him. That's what Ai's reason for doing most things was, especially these days, with some of the danger to Ai's existence gone. But as much as Yusaku wished Ai would target someone else, no one besides Kolter and himself could know about Ai. And Ai had told him more than once that Kolter was less fun as a target.

"But that's not all," Ai continued. Yusaku's interest was piqued at that. The joking tone Ai usually had in his voice was gone; he was serious now, which meant this was an actual reason. "Based on everything we know about Jaden, he'd want to help out, right? But he didn't until he was 'convinced', and I want to know why. I know you do, too. On the surface he seems exactly what he should be. A regular guy with a love for dueling who helps out his friends, some of whom happen to be professional duelists. But every once in a while he'll say something or do something that doesn't fit into that picture. There's more to Jaden Yuki than meets the eye, and you know that as well as I do, Playmaker."

_I struggled to find any enjoyment out of it for awhile myself. When I did duel, my friends were really frustrated with how I was doing it. Guess dueling in life-or-death situations does that to you, huh?_

_According to some, he might jump into the Pro League himself. Supposedly, he could even be better than his classmates, so he’d have a pretty decent shot at it._

_Everyone keeps pushing me to go pro, Sy especially, but it can't work out for me right now._

Jaden had inserted himself into Yusaku's life and kept pushing himself into it. There were aspects of Jaden that certainly annoyed Yusaku: mainly, his insistence that the two of them were friends. He was nice, always made sure to respect Yusaku's disinterest with duels while still trying to help Yusaku in any way he could. But there was obviously some kind of secret hiding under the surface, and the more time he spent time around Yusaku, the more curious he became. This was a mystery he was more determined now than ever to solve.

"Good work," Yusaku finally told Ai once he pulled himself out of his thoughts. Ai beamed at him. "We'll see what happens. Maybe, we'll even get something out of him."

A step closer to learning the truth.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Behold! This is the newest and greatest evolution of Dueling!
> 
> Vrains' maintenance period continues on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, yikes! It's been...about four months, since this has updated! I'm so sorry about that. I never meant to let this sit for so long without an update. But, to make up for it, this chapter is nearly 7,500 words long!! Make sure you have some time to sit down before you read!! I never meant for it to be so long, but... That length is one of the reasons it took so long for this chapter to go up. I've been working on this for over a month. We'll get into some of the other reasons, later, but for now...
> 
> During some, uh, research that this chapter required, I found out that Kusanagi's full dub has apparently been revealed. Apparently his first name is Cal, making his full name Cal Kolter (while Jin is still...Jin). So, once again, all the previous chapters have been updated. If you've been following since the beginning, you might remember that when this fic used all the sub names for Vrains, Yusaku referred to Kusanagi as, Kusanagi, while Jaden called him Shoichi. When the dub switch happened, they both started calling him Kolter. Now, however, Yusaku should be calling him Kolter, while Jaden should be calling him Cal. If you don't want to go back and read (I don't blame you), that should be the only difference. And anything that doesn't fit that pattern is a mistake I missed. But I'm really glad that Kusanagi's first name got revealed, because I feel like quite a bit got lost in this fic with the switch to just Kolter, but now we've regained all that. That pattern will continue going forward.
> 
> Also, since the last time this story updated, it reached 99 kudos, which is almost 100, which is amazing! Incredible! When I first started this, not sure whether it'd even get more than one chapter, I thought this was such a niche, self-indulgent thing that not many people would probably be interested in. Clearly, I was wrong. And I'm glad! I'm glad other people are interested in the possibilities of a friendship between Yusaku and Jaden. I love this story with my whole heart. Thanks, guys, for everything.

Yusaku waited out by the front entrance of the school building, flipping through news headlines on his phone. Most of them were uninteresting, unimportant. It was a sign of the times. That’s how peace was. Still, he couldn’t drop his guard. He needed to keep his eye out for anything that happened. His main interest was primarily the Knights of Hanoi; there was a certain someone he couldn’t let go of, even if they wanted him to.

However, the headlines weren’t his main concern. He didn’t think anything would be happening, he was simply passing time.

Today was the fated day. Jaden and Skye had worked out a date for Jaden to come in and meet with the dueling club. It had to be open-ended, given Jaden’s schedule...whatever that was. Something could unexpectedly come up, apparently, and if it did, he promised to let Yusaku and Skye both know and reschedule. Since Yusaku hadn’t heard anything, he assumed Jaden was still coming. So here he was, waiting. School had just let out, he’d show any minute now.

A text message appeared on Yusaku’s screen, though it wasn’t from Jaden. It was Ai, discreetly asking Yusaku if he thought Jaden would bail. Yusaku rolled his eyes. At this rate, he had no idea. He didn’t trust his own predictions of Jaden’s behavior at the moment.

”Hey, Yusaku!!”

Yusaku looked up. Jaden was just arriving, running in. His height and red jacket stood out like a sore thumb from the students surrounding him. Yusaku closed the news, locked his phone and shoved it into his pocket.

”You actually showed up,” Yusaku said when Jaden reached him.

Jaden laughed. “I don’t exactly have the best reputation for being on time.”

Yusaku raised an eyebrow. Was that something to really laugh about so easily? 

"So, where's this club of yours?" Jaden looked around, as if it were going to be outside. 

Rolling his eyes, Yusaku jabbed his thumb back over his shoulder to point behind him, towards the school. "It's this way. Come on." He turned around and led the way inside. Jaden followed close behind. It was after class now, and the dueling club had already gotten permission, so thankfully he didn't need to deal with trying to sign Jaden in as a guest. He could go straight to the club room. With the halls emptying out as most of the students left, navigating to the room was easy. 

They both hesitated outside the door to the room once they reached it. Yusaku's hand hovered over the doorknob. He really preferred not to be here. He didn't like hanging around the dueling club very often. The last thing he needed was more people trying to become attached to him like Shima and, as much as he hated to admit it, Jaden. Minimizing any risk of SOL Technologies finding out his identity. Anyone finding out was a threat.  He didn't like dueling, either, which made attending the meetings...aggravating, at times. 

He couldn't begin to imagine why Jaden was so reluctant, but... No, he could, actually. He had some budding ideas, but nothing close to a substantial theory. And wasn't that part of the point?

There were three reasons why Yusaku needed to open this door and make them both walk in. One, he needed to look like a normal high school student. Many students liked to attend clubs, so joining a club and attending at least some meetings helped him blend in. Two, he needed to improve. Because he rarely dueled at all, these days not dueling at all, he couldn't naturally improve the way most duelists would. The key to learning new strategies and improving his deck was attending these meetings, picking up observations from other duels. He hated to admit the possibility, but he might need to go back into Vrains some day, after it'd be reopened, and he couldn't afford to fall behind. And three, Ai had given a solid argument for this before. The mystery that was Jaden Yuki was bothering both of them. This was a good chance to observe Jaden and gather more evidence outside his comfort zone.

With that, there was nothing else to do but open the door and let himself and Jaden in. He did so before he could change his mind, and before Jaden could decide to back out.

"He actually came," Skye breathed as she watched the two of them walk in. Yusaku shrugged at her, while Jaden waved to her from behind him.

The meeting started soon after that, since everyone was present. Yusaku and Jaden ended up being shoved to the front of the room, Jaden being asked to introduce himself. All Yusaku wanted to do was sit down, watch but not participate, but everyone's eyes were on him, too, no one letting him take a seat. Why did he have to stand up front, too?"

"Yo!" Jaden waved to everyone, a smile on his face.

Yusaku looked over at him with a frown. He was smiling way more than usual. It had to be fake.

Jaden started plowing through his introduction. "I'm, uh... I don't do so well with crowds these days, so, sorry if I'm a bit nervous. You all can call me Jaden. I went to Duel Academy when I was about your age, so... I know a thing or two about dueling, I guess. I still duel these days, and a lot of my friends do, too, so I should have a fairly good idea of what I'm doing. I don't know how popular they are now, but I duel with Elemental Heroes. I think they're pretty cool. If you've ever seen Destiny Heroes, they're a little like that. And...oh!" He paused to sling an arm around Yusaku's shoulders. Yusaku quickly wiggled out of his grasp. "Yusaku and I are buddies! And that's kinda how I got asked to be here."

"Don't you help coach some pro duelists, too?" one of the students in the back asked. "Chazz Princeton? Jesse Anderson? Syrus Truesdale?"

"They call it that, still?" Jaden shrugged. "A lot of my friends that I went to school with ended up going pro. It's no surprise, really. They're really good, and it's what a lot of students attend Duel Academy for. I don't really do much, though. Sometimes they ask me for my advice on their decks, or while looking through some cards I'll help them find a strategy, that's all. Just little things like that, once in awhile. They give me way too much credit. I'm honestly surprised people recognize me based on that at all, I shouldn't be that well-known."

"Rumor is, you're really good. Good enough to become a professional duelist, too," another student added. "If that's the case, why haven't you?"

Jaden winced, but kept the smile on his face. "Well, you know... Everyone's got their own path through life!" he responded quickly.

Yusaku narrowed his eyes, watching Jaden closely. He didn't miss that.

"Whoa, Yusaku, how did you become friends with this guy?" Shima asked.

"We're not really..." Yusaku sighed. "We just keep running into each other. That's all."

With a laugh, Jaden added, "Life's pretty funny like that."

"Okay, everyone, settle down. This isn't an interview," Skye said.

After some pushing, the students around the room began to calm down, the buzz from having such a famous figure in front of them starting to fade. Pretty soon, the agenda for the rest of the afternoon was announced. Everyone would be breaking up into groups to duel, one-on-one. Jaden would bounce from duel to duel to watch and give pointers and advice. Everyone ran around the room to start picking out their partners, and soon everyone had an opponent. Everyone except Yusaku, anyway.

"You still need someone to duel against," the club president noted, looking at Yusaku. "You could probably duel Jaden, if you wanted."

Yusaku opened his mouth to decline, but Jaden was faster.

"Nah. It'd be fun, but it'll be easier for me to do my job if I'm not in my own duel on top of that, right? I'm sure Yusaku doesn't mind that much," he added with a grin at Yusaku. "Since we always keep running into each other, I can work with him some other time if he wants."

Yusaku smiled back, actually grateful for that. "I don't mind. You go ahead."

"Hey, Yusaku!" Shima waved Yusaku over towards his duel, against Skye. "If you're not dueling, you should cheer on your best friend!"

"Uh, sure." Yusaku chose to ignore the look in Jaden's eyes at that and walked over to sit next to Shima. 

* * *

"Best friend, huh?" Jaden asked later as he and Yusaku walked out of the school.

"It's not like that. We're not friends," Yusaku corrected him. 

"Shima certainly seems to think you are."

"Shima's convinced that Playmaker is his soulmate," Yusaku snorted. "I wouldn't say he's the best source on whether he's my best friend or not."

* * *

Jaden’s visit to the club seemed to be a success. Because whatever his prior reluctance had been about seemed to be fading. At the very least, he was more comfortable by the end of the meeting, and was open to coming back again sometime.

Of course, the club took him up on that. That wasn’t the only meeting Jaden was invited to.

Another day came where Yusaku had to wait by the school entrance after class to bring Jaden in to the dueling club’s meeting room. As they walked in together, Skye was mixing around a cup full of popsicle sticks. The second she spotted them, she shoved the cup out towards them.

”Uh,” Yusaku responded to that. Did the dueling club somehow become an arts and crafts club? He might have to officially resign if that was the case. Other than hot dogs, he wasn’t much good at making things.

”There’s going to be a couple of duels today,” Skye said. “Participants will be decided by drawing sticks. I drew circles on the bottoms of each of these sticks with different colored markers. Two of the colors decide who participates in the duels.”

Yusaku stared blankly at the cup. Was he really supposed to draw one?

”No getting out of it this time, Yusaku.” Skye chuckled. “You usually manage to weasel your way out of dueling, but not this time. You’re just as likely as anyone else.”

...Duel? There was a chance he was dueling today? He had his fake deck on him, of course, so it was fine, but... 

...He might have to...

Skye was still staring at him. Without thinking about it, Yusaku pulled one of the sticks towards the end out and held onto it. He didn’t bother to look at the mark on the end.

”Your turn.” Skye looked at Jaden.

”Me? You sure you want me to duel?” Jaden asked. 

“Why not? We can learn a lot from watching you duel.”

Jaden sucked a breath in through his teeth, grimacing as he looked down at the cup. But he still forced himself to grab one of the sticks in the middle. “Guess we’ll see how my luck holds,” he mumbled.

Yusaku barely processed any of the exchange that happened next to him. Surely Ai caught the whole thing from his duel disk, attached firmly to his arm, and would relay it to him later. For now, Yusaku was too busy fighting down the sense of dread rising up his legs.

He wasn’t ready for this. This wasn’t a necessary fight. Hanoi was gone, he had no reason to duel anymore. He didn’t want to.

Jaden was flipping his stick over to see what color he’d gotten. “Huh, pink,” he commented. The words floated straight past Yusaku’s ears. Jaden bent down to catch the color on Yusaku’s stick. “Green. Hm.”

If Yusaku was lucky, he wouldn’t have to duel at all. 

"Before we find out who's dueling, I have some news." The chatter starting to fill the room died down as Skye spoke. Everyone who was coming to the meeting was present now, and all the sticks had been distributed. Skye sat the cup down next to her. "Link Vrains is, of course, closed to the public while it's under maintenance. However, my brother was able to get us permission to go in today during our meeting. Duels in Vrains can be very different than duels in the real world, especially with Speed Duels and Action Duels, so being able to practice different kinds of dueling is beneficial for all of us. It's all still in a basic, testing phase, of course, but there's enough implemented and properly working that we should be able to duel there."

"Alright!!" Shima's voice, from only a few feet away, felt sharp to Yusaku's ears. He hid a wince. "We get to go back to Vrains! Maybe we'll even get to see Playmaker!" This last comment was punctuated by a dab.

"We'll be the only ones there," Skye told him. "Some of the top Entertainment Duelists have been invited to test the server, but Go, Blue Angel, and Zarc all turned the offer down. The chances of seeing Playmaker there are pretty low, too, according to my brother."

"I guess it's still pretty rad that we get to go back in before anyone else," Shima amended.

Trying to shut the conversation out from his mind, Yusaku shot Ai a panicked glance. He hadn't planned on having to go back into Vrains, especially not so soon, and especially not a situation where Yusaku was needed instead of Playmaker. If he went in now, he'd be logging in as Playmaker. Not only would everyone know who he was, he'd also be putting a huge target on his back, revealing himself to SOL Technologies. Maybe he should try to get out of it, but maybe there was a less suspicious alternative.

Ai made the screen on Yusaku's duel disk give off a brief, dull glow that no one else should've noticed. It looked like Ai had something figured out. They should be safe.

"Alright, everyone, let's go," the club president announced. "We don't want to waste anymore time that we could be in Vrains, do we?"

Yusaku quickly and briefly told Jaden how to get into Vrains as everyone logged in at the same time. 

Once logged in, Yusaku’s first priority was to look down at himself to check his appearance.

Thankfully, Ai really did have him covered. He seemed to be logged in as a new profile entirely, though whether or not all the profiles and avatars in Vrains before were wiped during this maintenance kept that a mystery. Everything for his profile was set to defaults. His appearance was set to be his real life appearance. His screenname was just his name with random numbers at the end. His deck was still his standard dummy deck. Nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever.

A smile flickered on his lips. Ai really did come through for him, no gags or jokes about it this time. As much as Ai liked to joke around, he could be counted on when everything was on the line.

Brave Max stood nearby, of course. Most of the other club students seemed to have profiles similar to Yusaku’s, their avatars retaining their true appearances. He glanced over at Jaden. He was just intending to make sure Jaden logged in successfully, but Jaden caught him off guard.

It was mostly his eyes. Jaden’s eyes outside Vrains were a dark, solid brown. Here, it was hard to tell what color his eyes were. It’s like they were constantly changing, or they were trying to hold several colors at once. His hair had grown a bit longer, his clothes a bit rattier. Had Jaden’s teeth always been that pointed? Yusaku never really paid attention before, but with all the other differences in Jaden’s face, he was drawn in.

"Managed to get in." Jaden flashed Yusaku a strained smile. "Barely, though. There's all kinds of options for setting up your profile. It was a lot at once, honestly, so I just left most of 'em as default. ...Uh, wait, is there something on my face?"

"Your..." Yusaku's voice died in his throat.

Should he point it out?

There was no way that this was default behavior, it couldn't be. Default appearance behavior was to just use the real appearance of the person. Jaden didn't look like this. Especially not his eyes, they were brown, not all these weird colors. Then again, something about Jaden had always been off. Yusaku was deeper into the mystery surrounding Jaden than he'd like by now. But it kept nagging at him, more evidence pushed into his face, and honestly, there wasn't much he was doing now that this could distract him from. So, could Jaden's appearance in Vrains be tied to the mystery? If he pointed it out to Jaden, would he find out more?

Or, if he said something, would Jaden keep his mouth shut? Which would only prove the connection, but was it a good idea to let Jaden know he was onto him? If Jaden made him explain why he was so curious in the first place, the origin of his curiosity was buried deep in the Hanoi Project and around Playmaker. Jaden may have his secrets, and Yusaku may have been thinking about them, but Yusaku would rather keep his own secrets hidden. The last thing he needed was Jaden trying to figure him out.

Jaden said he only left most of the settings of his profile on default, too. He may have changed some, and his avatar settings may have been one of those. Yusaku didn't know nearly enough about Jaden to know how he'd react if Yusaku pointed out the difference if it was intentional. Causing a scene here and now was probably not ideal.

"...nothing," Yusaku finally finished. The cons of pointing anything out outweighed any benefits. If someone else decided to say anything, that was one thing, but Yusaku wasn't going to do it himself.

"Oh, good. For a second I was worried, if I had crumbs on my face or something, would it show up on me here?" Jaden laughed. "That's probably silly, though."

Yusaku shrugged and chose to look around him at Vrains' current state, take it all in instead.

It was small. Vrains was currently small. The virtual reality world used to be so much larger that this space almost made Yusaku feel trapped. If anyone found him out and tried to track him down here, it'd be harder to get away. But this was probably a testing area. Not meant to be part of the final product of Vrains. It certainly looked like it; the visuals made this look like a room in someone's house. Where the boundaries of this area cut off was obvious, whereas Vrains looked like it could go on forever. There was plenty of room here for at least one standard duel to take place. Around the edge of the space, a small, stable Data Storm circled around on a path with no end, perfect for a Speed Duel. In one corner, the Data Storm branched off into two paths, a second path leading to a still small yet unstable Data Storm. The second path was blocked off. Were the Data Storms for testing, too?

What was SOL Technologies planning for Vrains?

"Is everyone here? That's good." Everyone's attention turned to Skye as she spoke; since her brother worked for SOL, and they'd gotten permission through him, she seemed to be in charge of this excursion. Fine by Yusaku. Akira must've helped Skye with her profile the way Ai had with Yusaku. Skye looked exactly the same as she had a few minutes ago, before they were logged in, with no evidence that she was really Blue Angel lingering. 

Good.

This wasn't a day for revealing secrets.

"This is just one of the testing areas for Vrains," Skye told them. "It'll be taken out before Vrains reopens. All the testing areas contain Data Storms because SOL Technologies is working on regulating Speed Duels and increasing their safety. That way, anyone can participate in a Speed Duel. Rather than dealing with so many people break the restriction against them, this has been in consideration for awhile, and with what happened to Vrains not that long ago..." Skye paused to clear her throat. "It was the perfect timing. This is part of the reason Vrains has been down for so long."

"So, wait," Jaden whispered to Yusaku. "Speed Duels were against the rules?? You guys didn't tell me that about that part."

Yusaku shrugged. "I only ever saw duels in the plaza while I was at Kolter's truck. They showed Speed Duels there so often that it barely mattered."

"We'll have two duels here: a Speed Duel and an Action Duel. However, since Speed Duels are still in the testing phase and aren't yet safe, we'll be using Speed Duels rules while on the ground. There's some Skills we'll still be able to use as well, though obviously something like Playmaker's Storm Access wouldn't be possible in these conditions. After that, the Action Duel will be just like any other Action Duel," Skye went on.

"So, who's gonna be dueling?" one of the other students asked.

"Right, I almost forgot." Skye nodded. "First, the Speed Duel. That will be be between whoever got pink."

"Pink... Oh, wait." Jaden hit his right fist against the palm of his left hand. "That's me. I got pink!"

"I drew pink, too," another student confirmed. They were one of the club members that Yusaku knew less about; he barely recognized them.

Jaden and the other student moved to the middle of the area. The two of them stood across from each other while leaving enough room between them for the field; while Speed Duels used less zones, the field was still fairly large.

"Alright, let's duel." The student drew their starting hand.

"Yeah! Let's both get our games on!" Jaden grinned as he drew his starting hand as well. When he looked down at his cards, however, his enthusiasm evaporated. "Uh, actually, can we get a time out first?"

"Time out?" The club president frowned. "What's wrong?"

"I, uh, just wanted to check something first. Make sure it's alright." Jaden let out a sheepish laugh. "See, my buddy Sy and I got together the other day--"

"Wait, you mean Syrus Truesdale??" His opponent gasped.

"Yeah, Sy. Anyway, we got together and we decided to have a duel with, like, a twist. We wanted to use decks with different types of monsters than we were used to. I usually use Warriors, and Sy, well, I probably don't need to tell you guys about what cards he uses. So he used this, uh, Plant-based deck, and I used Spellcasters. What happened with the duel isn't so important, but, uh, apparently I never switched my regular deck back in after that duel? And I still have the Spellcaster deck? These aren't my regular cards and I don't usually use them, but I can still duel with them if that's alright!" Jaden laughed again. "But, uh, figured I should say something first. My bad."

Yusaku sighed. Jaden, as always, seemed to be somewhat of a mess.

Though, he usually used Warriors. Elemental Heroes to be exact, if Yusaku was remembering right. They were what he used during one of their first encounters, anyway. Warriors. Now that Yusaku thought about it, that was interesting, because...

"That's fine," the club president decided.

"Sweet!" Jaden glanced down at his cards again. "I promise I won't give this duel less than everything I've got!"  

* * *

Yusaku went through a quick mental rundown of the field.

No damage had been dealt yet. Jaden's turn had just ended. He had two traps or spells set, no monsters on his field, other than the two in his graveyard. His opponent's field was empty other than Mountain as a Field Spell and the graveyard, which included Order to Charge and Luster Dragon. That field may be empty now, but Yusaku knew that could easily change during their turn. Jaden was currently at a disadvantage.

There were three reasons, however, that Yusaku expected Jaden to pull through anyway. Jaden had already used an effect to Special Summon during his opponent's turn, and Yusaku's instinct was telling him that he had other cards in his deck that could as well. Jaden went to Duel Academy, a school that specialized helping students to learn how to duel, so if Jaden couldn't push himself out of this corner, then the school wasn't worth the price tag to attend. Jaden was friends with multiple professional duelists who all held his dueling skills in high regard, so this should be easy for him regardless.

Of course, the outcome of this duel didn't matter. Yusaku didn't care. But if he were asked who he thought would win, Jaden would be the clear pick.

"I summon Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV 4." As his opponent summoned the monster, it appeared on the field in a burst of flame. "Then I play the spell Level Up! Horus levels up to level 6."

Fire swirled around Horus as it grew into its new form. 

"Wait, Mountain makes dragons stronger, right?" Shima asked from his position near Yusaku. The remaining club members were grouped up together at a safe distance to watch. "So why haven't its attack or defense changed?"

"When it's level 6, Horus isn't affected by spells," Skye told him. "Even if they belong to the person who controls it."

"Horus won't be able to level up in battle this turn, unfortunately, so it'll be staying at this level for awhile. I set one card face-down. Time to battle. Horus attacks you directly!" Jaden's opponent declared.

Jaden still had those two set cards, Yusaku assumed to protect himself. But Jaden took the damage without activating any effects.

"That's it from me."

"Not so fast!" Jaden pushed a button on his duel disk. "I play the trap: Just Desserts! Since you have one monster on the field, you take 500 damage. And that's not all! Magician of Dark Illusion's effect activates from my hand. Since it's still your turn, I can Special Summon him!"

The Magician emerged from the shadows onto the field, while Jaden's opponent took the effect damage.

"If your turn's finished, that means I'm up. Here goes something." Jaden glanced down at his hand and grinned. "I activate my skill: Master of Magicians! Since I lost over 2,000 Life Points, I can randomly add either Thousand Knives, Dark Magic Attack or Dark Magic Expanded to my hand." Jaden looked over his new card. "Sweet! First, I'll activate Ancient Rules! This lets me summon Dark Magician from my hand."

Dark Magician took its position next to Magician of Dark Illusions, gripping his staff tightly with both hands.

"Magician of Dark Illusion's effect activates! Since he's on my field, I can summon Dark Magician from my graveyard!"

Another Dark Magician stood on the other side of Magician of Dark Illusions, mirroring the first Dark Magician. Jaden's field was full of Spellcasters.

"Next, I activate the Dark Magic Attack I just got. All your spells and traps are destroyed!"

"Shoot," his opponent muttered.

With no way to protect themself from Jaden's attack, the result of the duel was clear. Jaden's magicians quickly took his opponent down, earning him the victory.

"That was incredible," Jaden's opponent told him. "You were able to get all these monsters on your field so quickly, and they're all so powerful!"

Jaden chuckled. "I'm not really a Spellcaster person, but it works. But you were great, too! You took down one of my Dark Magicians easily, and Horus the Black Flame Dragon has some strong effects."

Chatter swarmed around Yusaku as everyone started discussing the duel at once. Yusaku, however, stayed quiet. He didn't use LV Monsters or high level Normal Monsters; there wasn't much for him to take out of the duel other than how to take them down, and he could already do that. How either duelist could've dueled better or what they did well wasn't much of his concern. He just had to sit through one more duel, and then he could leave.

As the discussion quieted down, Skye spoke up again.

"Now it's time for the Action Duel. Anyone who drew green will be dueling in the Action Duel."

Yusaku thought back for a moment, to Jaden looking at the color he'd been assigned. Green. He was green. It was his turn to duel.

Crap.

Suddenly, Jaden was next to him, putting his arm around Yusaku's shoulders. Yusaku felt so detached that he barely registered it. "Looks like you're up next, pal. You up for it?"

His heart was sinking into his feet, his veins felt like they were full of ice, he couldn't look at anything but the floor. Why did he feel like this? What was wrong with him? It was stupid. He didn't have his Cyberse deck, Ai was smart enough to stay hidden, no one was going to find out he was Playmaker. The deck he had on him wasn't any good, but it didn't matter if he won or not. Why was the idea of losing this duel making him feel like he was sinking further down through the ground?

...But, as Jaden spoke, the words brought Yusaku back to himself a bit.

"We're not friends."

"Sure." Jaden squeezed Yusaku's shoulder. "If you think you can handle it... I'm rooting for you!"

Yusaku shrugged Jaden off of him. Forcing himself to look up, he saw Shima was making his way over to him.

"Guess it's you and me, then." Shima frowned as he looked at Yusaku. "You okay, buddy? You look a bit pale. Uh, paler than usual, I mean."

What Yusaku meant to respond with was, 'I'm fine to duel', but somehow the words got mixed up between his brain and his mouth. What he actually said was, "Dueling...fine..."

...Was that technically a pun? Oh, great. He was never going to hear the end of it from Ai later.

"Uh...okay, then." Shima didn't look like he believed him. Yusaku didn't blame him. He wouldn't believe himself either.

Action Duels worked with an Action Field. Usually, the Action Field would temporarily transform enough area in Vrains around the duel to give duelists the room they needed. Action Cards scattered around the field for duelists to find and use; often, the Action Field transformed the area in a way to give more places for Action Cards to hide and to give duelists more paths to move around the field. Before activating the Action Field, however, duelists would get to choose what Action Field they preferred to use, and a selection was randomly made based on those preferences.

A display panel appeared in front of Yusaku for this selection. However, only one option was available now: Castle Link. Probably related to testing. Yusaku made his selection and Shima did the same.

To no one's surprise, the Castle Link Action Field took form around them. The ground took on a checkerboard pattern under their feet, water surrounding them where the board cut off. Broken-off parts of the board floated in the water like platforms. Scattered debris covered the main part of the board, some of it looking like the remains of a castle, others like the remains of chess pieces. The sun looked large in the sky, shining close to them. Its light turned the water orange.

Action Cards swirled above Yusaku and Shima before scattering around the field.

Yusaku swallowed, then forced himself to take one deep breath, then another.

He wasn't getting out of this anymore.

* * *

"Alright! My turn!"

Yusaku watched as Shima drew his next card. Shima was holding up a bit better than expected. He'd countered the cost of his Green Baboon's effect with Nimble Momonga. Kept his Life Points up. It was better than Yusaku had expected from him.  

They were a few turns in now. Shima had Yellow Baboon, Archer of the Forest on his field. The Continuous Trap Berserking was face-up behind it.  Yusaku had a set monster and a set trap, but nothing else to protect himself with. 

"I activate Ayers Rock Sunrise! This lets me summon Green Baboon, Defender of the Forest from my graveyard."

As Green Baboon appeared on the field, both of Shima's monsters roared.

Jaden yelled something in response to the spell activation. Something about one of his friends. Yusaku missed what he said. He also missed how Shima got another level 7 Beast monster on the field. He was trying to keep his head in the game. And trying to find an Action Card that might help him.

What was wrong with him?

"Now, appear! The circuit that strengthens friendships!"

Wait. Yusaku looked over at Shima again. What Link Monster would be more helpful for Shima here than the powerful field he'd just assembled?

"The summoning condition is 2 level 5 or higher Beasts. I place Green Baboon and Behemoth in the Link Markers. I Link Summon Metal Baboon, Ruffian of the Forest!"

The new primate appeared in Shima's Extra Monster Zone, not linked to Yellow Baboon. Yusaku stared at the Link Monster. Metal Baboon had the same attack as Green Baboon. This didn't help Shima in the slightest. This was also the kind of move Yusaku expected Shima to take.

Still, two monsters with 2,600 on the field wasn't a good situation for Yusaku. He only had the one set monster.

"Hope you're ready, Yusaku! Time to battle!"

He only had one set monster and a trap that wouldn't do anything but stall Shima. Yusaku's best chance to turn this duel around was finding an Action Card. But he couldn't see any nearby, just debris and--

There.

Shima declared his first attack, for Metal Baboon to attack his set monster. But Yusaku was almost there. Just a little further and the Action Card would be in his hands.

He tripped, on what was probably a broken chunk of castle. Yusaku fell to the ground hard, his foot and his upper body aching. Action Duels. On top of everything else, why did it have to be an Action Duel? Playmaker never participated in Action Duels. Yusaku didn't like them. Even if they were in Vrains, he wasn't the active type. Action Fields made the ground harder to navigate, Yusaku wasn't the active type, didn't like all the physical activity involved over longer periods of time for these duels. And it wasn't like the Knights of Hanoi ever dueled in Action Duels, either.

Propping himself up on his knees and hands, Yusaku stayed down as the attack went through. Only after the attack could he make his move.

"Shining Angel's effect activates." Slowly, Yusaku pulled himself back on his feet. "When it'd destroyed in battle... I can summon a Light monster with 1,500 or less attack. From my deck, I summon... Ceremonial Bell!"

Ceremonial Bell chimed over his head, the sound protesting against Metal Baboon's attack.

"I don't know why you bothered." Shima cast a doubtful look in the bell's direction. "I mean, it's got no attack to protect you with, and it has to be in Attack Position. You might as well be taking a direct hit."

Yusaku remained silent.

"Okay, then. Your loss, then." Shima shrugged. "Yellow Baboon attacks Ceremonial Bell!"

"I activate Waboku." Yusaku reached a hand up to lean against Ceremonial Bell. "I take no battle damage. Ceremonial Bell isn't destroyed."

"For now," Shima scoffed. "Next turn, that thing's toast."

"Oh...wait." Yusaku squinted at the bell's card text. He nearly forgot. He barely knew this deck at all. "Ceremonial Bell's effect. We must show each other our hands."

The display for the cards in Shima's hand came up in front of Yusaku. He glanced through it. There wasn't much left in his hand, and there was nothing he needed to worry about regardless. The effect wasn't going to help him much here.

"Oof... You've only got Spells, man. Rough luck," Shima commented.

Yusaku ignored the comment.

With Shima's turn done, it was now his turn. Time to see what he could pull off. This was his last chance unless he did something, so might as well go all out. After he let go of Ceremonial Bell, he glanced at the card he drew. "I summon Hoshiningen. Its effect makes all Light monsters gain 500 attack."

The star spun around Ceremonial Bell as both monsters gained attack. 

"That's still not much for either of them," Shima observed. "Not enough to take on my baboons."

"I equip Black Pendant to Ceremonial Bell. It gains 500 more attack." Yusaku paused to take a deep breath, looking up at his monsters above him. It was now or never. Time to see how this would play out. "Next, I play Shield & Sword. All monsters on the field switch their original attack and defense this turn."

Shima became antsy as he watch the stats switch. Ceremonial Bell was now the strongest monster on the field. "Hold on--"

"Then, Change of Heart." Yusaku gave Shima no time to protest. "I gain control of Yellow Baboon this turn."

"Wait, Yellow Baboon! You can't do this to me, bro!" But Yellow Baboon ignored Shima's words. Steadily, it walked over to Yusaku, where Ceremonial Bell and Hoshiningen were waiting.

"Battle. Yellow Baboon attacks Metal Baboon," Yusaku announced.

Both baboons had the same stats, resulting in mutual destruction. Shima was defenseless.

Yusaku had no intention of giving Shima a break. "Action Card: Double Attack. Ceremonial Bell's attack is double this turn."

"Oh, come on, when did you get an Action Card??" Shima yelped.

"It must've been when he tripped," Skye noted from the sidelines. "No one saw, but he must've grabbed it when he landed on the ground."

Yusaku rubbed his wrist. It'd been painful, but worth it. Shima had already seen his deck before, and already thought little of it. Yusaku didn't blame him for that, it really was a bad deck. But it made Shima underestimate anything he might be able to do, and that overconfidence was useful. It'd caused him to make a bad mistake or two, and it was best to let Shima feel that way until the last second.

As Shima's Life Points dropped to zero, it hit Yusaku.

He'd...won the duel. He'd won the duel. He'd gotten lucky and somehow managed it, he didn't expect this at all. This was his dummy deck. Never meant to actually duel. He shouldn't have won, but he did. It should've made Yusaku feel better, about dueling as himself instead of Playmaker, about dueling with the deck he hadn't built to be able to win no matter what, about dueling at all. But it only made him feel worse.

"Nice!" someone told him. Yusaku wasn't even sure who was standing next to him now, talking to him. "You did great out there, that was a good duel!"

"No." Yusaku looked down at his duel disk. "I just got lucky. If any of the cards I'd drawn were different, I never would have won. Shima really should've won."

Yeah, he got lucky.  _Insanely_  lucky. This deck was made of some of the oldest cards out there. It shouldn't be able to beat any of the newer decks or strategies out there. No amount of skill or strategy on Yusaku's part should make up for what this deck lacked. Most of the card he'd drawn were exactly what he needed. Between that and Shima's blunders, he'd managed a fluke. It felt like the equivalent of winning the dueling lottery. It required a lot of luck. Yusaku's real deck didn't require much luck, even if it was on his side, so this felt much more lucky than he was used to.

It was weird. It didn't feel right.

* * *

Once they logged out of Vrains, once the duel club meeting was over, Jaden had to run off somewhere. Home, probably. Which meant Yusaku had the pleasure of walking alone.

He always walked back to his apartment alone. He preferred it that way. He wasn't really in the mood to try to deal with Jaden, especially after how much the day had rattled him. Trading Jaden's company for Ai's wasn't much of an improvement, but at least he didn't have to try to hide anything with Ai.

"Good going, Yusaku. We got more mysteries than answers out of that." Ai poked his head out of Yusaku's duel disk to pout.

"Then we know we're on the right track," Yusaku replied, "and we're even more sure now that there really is a mystery to solve. He said he left most of his profile settings default. What about his avatar?"

"You noticed he looked different, too, huh? Nope, he didn't change anything for that at all. That was the default." Ai rested his cheek against his hand. "The default's supposed to use what you really look like. That's what I did for you. His almost looked...corrupted, or something. So either something's really glitchy with those settings, or there's something really weird about him. More than meets the eye. Like the way he appears in the real world isn't how he's supposed to look, or something."

"And how likely is it that there's a glitch?" Yusaku asked.

"Based on you and Skye? And everyone else we saw in Vrains who didn't bother to edit their appearances before the whole thing got shut down? Not likely. Sounds like the latter."

Yusaku sighed. "What kind of person do you have to be for that to even happen?"

"You know what else was weird? He did still try to get out of dueling, but he seemed less nervous about this time," Ai pointed out. "The one time he accidentally brought the wrong deck with him.

"...Maybe it wasn't an accident."

Why wouldn't Jaden want his usual deck with him? Why was he reluctant to duel? Did he have a reason like Yusaku's, or maybe it was something else entirely. Yusaku wasn't sure he wanted to consider the possibilities.

"And it's funny, how his regular deck uses Warriors, because your old deck before you had Cyberse monsters used quite a few Warriors, too. What a coincidence. He didn't need his regular deck to win, though! He really is that good after all. And you didn't need your real deck or my help to win your duel, either. Though, uh, given your history, I'm don't know if it's possible for you to lose," Ai added quickly under his breath.

Yusaku looked down at him. "So you didn't do anything to manipulate the odds in my favor?"

"Nope, I didn't touch your deck or anything.  _Ai_ stayed out of everything. I rather like my freedom, thank you very much." Ai beamed at him, but after a couple of seconds it faltered. "You didn't really think I did do something, did you?"

"No. It didn't seem right. Something about the duel just felt off." Yusaku frowned. "I wouldn't have won the duel if I wasn't so lucky. It almost felt like it wasn't just my luck at work."

Ai snorted. "Who knows, maybe that was because of Jaden, too. ...He did actually say something about luck. Something about his luck holding out on whether or not he'd have to duel today. That's a funny coincidence."

"Maybe it's not."

There was so little they knew about Jaden. It was starting to give Yusaku a headache.

Ai stretched his arms out above him, then glanced up at Yusaku again. "...Are you okay, by the way? You didn't seem like yourself when you were dueling. Or for most of the meeting, actually."

"I don't know what happened," Yusaku admitted. "This felt different than most of my duels with the Knights of Hanoi. I knew there was a strong chance I could lose, and it froze me for some reason. I defeated the Knights of Hanoi. I learned the truth of the past. I got my revenge. I shouldn't be stuck anymore, I should be able to move forward. But that was the first real duel I've had since we stopped the Tower, and maybe I still can't. Maybe I'm not where I should be. I don't understand it. I should be better than this by now."

"Recovery isn't linear." With a sigh, Ai reached a hand out to grab Yusaku's arm. "Don't be too hard on yourself, pal. You've got plenty of time to figure it all out now. Just don't rush yourself, and don't forget that you're not alone, either. You've always got hot dog guy! And, uh, I guess I'm here, too, if you need me."

"...I don't think I'll go to the duel club meetings for awhile. I'd rather avoid anything to do with dueling."

"Can't say I blame you there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, some stuff about the actual chapter
> 
> i did a lot of research on these duels. multiple hours into rules and spell speeds and card activations and chains to try to figure out if certain things were legal. i'm not entirely sure that this all follows the rules properly, still. if you notice something's off, just please, grin and bare it. i want this to be as faithful to the rules as possible, yes, but beyond this point i don't plan to fix any problems with the duels in this chapter. just...pretend it's legal in this au. i couldn't handle writing out more than two turns per duel because it'd be so much longer and require so much more planning out and researching, so i'm sorry about that.
> 
> i also did multiple hours of research into the decks used in the duels, as well, because almost every deck in every duel shown needed it! the horus user didn't need much, because i like horus a lot and have used it enough that i remember how the decks i built for it work, and i remember how horus works. i just needed a monster i could get on the field easily with over 2000 attack, and horus was perfect for that. the mention syrus plant deck that isn't actually shown, in duel links i have a sylvan deck on syrus, so it'd just be that. jaden has a dark magician deck i made for yami yugi for the master of magicians skill. if you play duel links you may remember a [certain](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/520102720041123840/534350332575219714/image.png) [glitch](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/520102720041123840/534351429444436009/image.png) where when this skill was unlocked, jaden got it instead of yami yugi, temporarily. i couldn't help incorporating it in here. the deck's built to get dark magician on the field quickly and support him with strong spellcasters, among other things. i couldn't remember if in gx, it was mentioned that dark magician was retired and yugi's deck had the only dark magician left, or something along those lines. i never looked into it. but if that was a thing in gx, uh, in this au it's not! dark magician isn't common but he's around for anyone to use.
> 
> for the second duel, i made this big thing for shima and yusaku where i had many cards listed out for each of them, many of them unused, so i had a lot of possibilities to choose from while planning their duel out. i still have it in discord. shima hasn't dueled much in vrains and has used very few cards, but luckily i was able to find a good resource for cards to support baboon of the forest cards, and general support for beasts as well, and made sure what shima did was definitely not his best option. as for yusaku, i looked at really old booster packs and a couple of structure decks and built up a more complete light monster deck for him with general support of old spells and traps. most of the cards were common i believe, some were rare, but i don't think i considered any of the super rare or ultra rare cards in those packs. i had a lot of these growing up, too, which made it fun for me. and like, i know. but most of the monsters in the deck i made up are weak with not great effects, and with the spells and traps, i don't think there's another combination in there that could've beaten shima. there's another monster he could've special summoned besides ceremonial bell that would've been better to pick, but that's not the point. saying yusaku was really lucky isn't an exaggeration here.
> 
> Again, I'm sorry for this chapter taking so long. I hope you enjoyed it, though! Next time will probably be shorter, but probably won't take so long. Getting back into the swing of things in Bacon Saver. Next time: Jaden craves a hot dog. Thanks for reading!!


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